


A Sea of River Rubicons

by wreathed



Category: British Comedy RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Anal Sex, Angst, Banter, Blow Jobs, Break Up, Cheating, Developing Relationship, Engagement, Fingerfucking, First Kiss, First Meetings, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Hand Jobs, M/M, Masturbation, Phone Calls & Telephones, Television Watching, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-20
Updated: 2011-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:59:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David and Charlie find their own points of no return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sea of River Rubicons

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by serriadh.

**One.**

“Charlie Brooker.” He proffers a hand, David shakes it. There are others in the green room, chatting idly, and in his head David is running over jokes. Ideally, he wants no distractions. But he’s polite, and Charlie Brooker’s going to be on camera alongside him very soon.

“David Mitchell. Great to see you here! Hope you’re well.”

“Fine, thanks. Shit-scared, but y’know. Then again, you do far more of these things than me...”

“Yes. Always a little bit nervous before, though. I’m very sorry, I do a lot of these things and forget people sometimes. Have we ever met before? Do I know you at all?”

 

**Two.**

“...We must’ve met before that green room. What about the Guardian’s Christmas party?”

David blinks upon recognising the intonation of a question. He hasn’t taken in much of what Charlie’s been saying over the past few minutes; his gaze has idly flitted between Charlie's collarbone and the edge of his shirt, his throat whenever he swallows beer, his mouth. He’s a little drunk.

“I’ve been once,” David says. “The entertainment was called ‘Horse Meat Disco’, for fuck’s sake. What does that _mean_?” At that he feels himself slipping into autopilot rant, but he wants Charlie to know him better than that and so he stops. “I tend to try and leave those sorts of things before,” and he coughs self-consciously, “before eleven.”

Charlie laughs, not unkindly, and buys him another drink.

 

**Three.**

“I regret not finishing my degree,” Charlie starkly proclaims. They are at Charlie’s flat one late evening, swapping stories about past lives.

“You seem to have done alright for yourself,” David countered.

“Yeah, but, you know. Everyone’s got a degree these days. Ten-a-penny, innit.”

“Hold out for some _ten-a-penny_ honorary doctorates?” David half heartedly suggests.

“For services to puerile shouting.”

“I’ve a feeling Oxford hand out those.”

“Your regrets...” Charlie suggests, seemingly not brave enough to make it a question.

“I, haha,” – it’s a nervous laugh, and David still speaks too carefully – “I regret not reciprocating more attention at uni. I did get asked out by girls, sometimes. And kissed. I just didn’t have a clue what to do. Wish I could blame an all-boys education, but really it’s just me.”

“Do you ever regret not kissing people now?” Charlie is looking right at him, and the room seems to surge with heat.

“Sometimes.”

“I wasn’t that great at making the first move either,” Charlie says after a too-long pause, finishing his beer in record time and muttering something about offering to go and get David’s coat and so, OK, perhaps David’s not deluding himself anymore, perhaps Charlie really _does_...

 

**Four.**

Messily soft, they kiss for the first time in a dressing room, right before a panel show recording (an exhilaratingly foolish location and occasion), and in that moment David reverts to nineteen years old and having no idea.

 

**Five.**

Breathing hard, David can tell Charlie’s as turned on as he is; David is being ever more firmly pressed against Charlie’s living room wall. Over Charlie’s shoulder, he can see the clocks for _Newswipe_ hanging in a line above the sofa.

He wants to see what Charlie looks like in his place, wants to show Charlie that he sometimes does have a clue, so he switches their positions and, after a swift kiss, drops to his knees. Making hasty work of Charlie’s zip and pushing Charlie’s hips down with his hands, he takes Charlie in his mouth, relishing even the pain from the floorboards. It’s over very quick.

 

**Six.**

“It’s been far too long. I mean, I don’t mean I was just looking for anyone to break the drought! Because you’re...but-”

“Mind getting us some whisky?” Charlie asks him. “In the cupboard by the cooker.” David’s pleased to be shut up.

“Sure.” Wearing only an unbuttoned shirt, he pads through to Charlie’s kitchen.

By the time he returns with the amber-coloured bottle and two glasses, Charlie (still entirely naked) has settled down to a repeat of _QI_.

“Can’t I leave you and a turned-off television alone for two minutes?” David asks exasperatedly, still holding the whisky.

“ _Dave ja vu_ , though. How can you only have Freeview in this day and age? You’re missing out on Sky Atlantic. And I bet you’ve only bought it ‘cause they’re switching off the signal soon.”

“Rupert Murdoch is an evil bastard,” David retorts. “And phoning satellite companies takes time, and I’m _incredibly_ busy and important. Talking of which, I’m not on this, am I?”

“Surprisingly, no” Charlie tells him, starting to laugh. David watches the camera pan to Jo, Rich and Sean besides Stephen and Alan, and so David has no choice but to believe him. “I feel terribly pleased with myself that I’ve managed to find a panel show you’re not on.”

“Turn it off,” David sighs.

“Only if I can _turn you on_.” Charlie turns his voice knowingly cheesy.

“That was awful. Leave. Now.”

“Good job we’re at mine. I can make all the shit puns I want,” Charlie tells him, and pulls the whisky from his arms as the _QI_ audience give an enthusiastic round of applause.

 

**Seven.**

“Well, I told my agent I’ll do it ages ago,” David says, voice choked, finding concentrating more difficult than usual – Charlie’s kneeling naked in front of him with one hand behind his back, his mouth opening upon the intrusion of his own fingers, colour rising in his cheeks, David watching him. “Seems like a great vehicle.”

“Never going to – _ah_ – I’m never going on it. Can you imagine me and no television for four days? I don’t reckon we’d get on.”

“Well, fuck you.”

Charlie reaches forward, his hand slick, and fists David’s cock once. “Feel free.”

 

**Eight.**

“Christ. I really do want you,” Charlie says one morning when they’d woken up together in his bed, as if he’s been hit by a sudden perturbing revelation. “Not the nearest person or any good friend, _you_. You neurotic wide-eyed brilliant idiot.”

“Thanks _so_ much,” David says sharply, but feels something joyous burst brightly like a firework in his chest.

 

**Nine.**

“I’m busy,” David tells him over the phone. “Honestly. I’ve got recordings every afternoon this week, and I’ve _run out_ of bloody _Observer_ column back-ups. So, unless you want me to send my editor eight hundred words on our explicit liaisons-”

“-definitely not an option, though feel free to call them ‘explicit liaisons’ from now on-”

“I’m going to need some writing time. And then we’ve got to get _Peep Show_ in the bag, which is always bloody exhausting. You can go without a fuck for a couple of months, Charlie. You’re not a slaggy teenager.” _Or Robert._

Charlie ignores his sneer. “So, you don’t want to see me over the next six weeks. At all. I’m aware your work schedule is punishing, but are you sure it’s not actually that you’re a little bit worried we’re getting a bit too close to a relationship for your liking?”

“I _was_ under the impression we were friends who occasionally went a bit crazy and got each other off,” David tells him, desperate to downplay what they’ve done, anxious at the thought of telling Charlie he wanted an actual _relationship_ with him. Charlie would run like the wind.

“Right. Then yeah, guess we are.”

“Not that I call the shots,” David told him hastily. “I mean, you started this.”

“Then you pushed me up against my wall.”

“Yeah,” David says, his throat suddenly dry, “I did do that.”

“Maybe the break will be a good thing.” Then the crackle of phoneline static.

“Maybe it will,” David eventually replies, neither of them backing down.

 

**Ten.**

At first, David doesn’t notice Charlie’s absence all that much. He has so much work on that there’s time for nothing else. And perhaps Charlie’s busy too, because David hears nothing from him.

Then he begins to realise. He craves Charlie’s caustic reaction to the debuts of bizarre television shows and bad adverts. He resumes a close familiarity with his right hand, but imagines Charlie’s mouth around him when he comes. The old Edinburgh souvenir mug that Charlie liked to drink his tea from is, these days, the mug always left unused on the shelf.

Three months after they last spoke, David calls Charlie’s number. He doesn’t get through. Charlie must be on the phone to someone else.

 _Fuck,_ David thinks to himself miserably. _I really am unbelievably stupid._

 

**Eleven.**

“I think, before – all those other times, you know – I thought I had the flu. But really, I just had a cold. But now I really have got the flu. This is the real thing. See what I mean?”

“ _What?_ ” David exclaims, utterly perplexed.

Charlie sighs. “Mate, look at you. You’re the only person I know with a flatmate _and_ a BAFTA. You suggested a break. You said this wasn’t a relationship. And now, somehow, there’s her.”

A breath-stealing jolt of dread rushes through him like bad nausea. Not until that moment does David realise his reticence has faded far too late.

“I’m happy for you,” David says.

“Seriously?”

“You know me far too well. You know when I’m joking.”

“Can’t believe this is happening to me,” Charlie says, dazed as if he has won the lottery without even having bought a ticket. “You’ve always been a bit of a cunt, Mitchell. Just think of me as playing catch-up.”

David snorts with laughter, because he knows exactly when Charlie’s joking, and quirks his lips upwards. Even more minutely, Charlie returns the sentiment.

 

**Twelve.**

Standing by a fire exit after his latest bout of lucrative lying, David suddenly remembers words initially only half-believed. _I really do want you._ The memory tugs warmly at the edges of his brain. It feels like a long time ago.

“I guess I should admit that I was never in a terrible hurry for you to fuck off either,” he says, scraping his foot awkwardly against the tarmac. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“Oh. Right!” Charlie replies, sort of smiling, worrying a cigarette between finger and thumb.

 

**Thirteen.**

_“Once more can’t hurt,”_ Charlie had told him over the phone. _“Not if you know how to do it right, anyway.”_

He has David up against his wall again.

Charlie places one rough hand around the two of them and starts to bring them off. The _Newswipe_ clocks aren’t up anymore, but there are Jo Malone candles and a powder compact on the coffee table. David idly wonders whether he’s some sort of emotional masochist.

“This doesn’t feel right, does it?” Charlie says straight after, not meeting David’s eyes.

“No,” David says, well-versed in the motions. “No. I suppose it doesn’t.”

 

**Fourteen.**

“Congratulations,” David says politely, finally momentarily riled into weak acidity by the news he’s known was coming. “Full works now, I suppose? _Hello!_ wedding, Hampstead Heath home, two point four beautiful yet acerbic children?”

“ _Private_ wedding,” Charlie says, voice flat. “As for the other stuff, who knows? I’m not sure. Whole new territory.”

“You can’t be the miserable square-eyed outsider with a wife and family. Public might not like your shtick so much anymore.”

Charlie actually looks quite hurt, as if David is the one ending this. “I honestly am sorry.” Then, gruffly, he tries to joke. “Do you know me at all?”

“I know you far too well,” David quietly replies.


End file.
